The barbeque is a great Australian tradition. Even for those who are not that patriotic, sitting around the barbie is one thing most Aussies love to do. Australians love the outdoors; we have fabulous steak and great beer, all the essential items to make a great barbeque. Except of course for the barbeque! If you don’t already have one, check out the great range at http://www.barbequesgalore.com.au/ where there is truly a barbeque for everyone.
Invite the guests, get some great steak and grab a few snags, get plenty of ice for the esky and you ready to host a great barbeque. Or are you? Here are a few tips to help make your barbeque a roaring success.
Clean the Barbeque
It is really important to start out with a nicely cleaned barbeque. It is tempting, at the end of a long day at the barbeque, to leave it dirty. This practice will eventually lead to rust. The best time to clean the barbeque is when it’s hot. Use a barbeque scraper to get rid of any leftovers stuck to the plate.
Don’t Cook Cold Meat
The whole point of hosting a barbeque is to provide your guests with great tasting meat cooked on the barbie. One of the most important tips to cooking a good steak on the barbeque is to make sure the meat is at room temperature before cooking. The hardest part of cooking on a barbie is getting the heat to cook the inside of the steak without burning the outside. Cold meat makes this task much harder.
Keep it Thin
Another important tip to help make sure the heat gets to the middle of the steak is to use thin meat. A thick steak will likely be black on the outside before it’s cooked in the middle. Buy your steaks about one centimetre thick and press them out with your hands to around half a centimetre thick. Flattening them will also help to tenderise the meat.
Preheat the Barbeque
The barbeque needs to be hot before you start cooking. Heat it up and then place your steaks on the barbeque plate. This will ensure that you get a great barbeque flavour and a good colour.
Beware the Poke
If you have spent any time watching the average person at the barbeque, you will have witnessed lots of poking and prodding. While this might make you look busy it is not necessary and does nothing to improve the steak. It takes time for the caramelised crust to form on your steak and if you keep pushing it around the plate it will never happen. Another mistake is to use your flipper to squash steak and patties down into the plate. While this might speed up cooking time it actually forces all the moisture out of the meat and leaves you with dry meat. Sausages too, are best left alone during cooking. Piercing them often causes them to fall apart and dry out.
